http://example VS http://www.example

Dilema over 301 redirect for Google

[stakaman]

I am faced with a huge dilemma over creating redirects for all my http://example.com VS http://www.example.com
My backlinks are much stronger with the first, whereas my number of indexed pages less.

Any ideas or suggestions will be much appreciated

[edited by: msgraph at 7:52 pm (utc) on Aug. 13, 2005]
[edit reason] example'd urls [/edit]

[goodroi]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld stakaman!

It doesn't really matter. What does matter is that you only have one version and you avoid the canonicalization issues.

[stakaman]

Thanks for the warm welcome and your reply.
Does it not matter that my http://example.com website has a PR6 and the http://www.example.com PR7 and also significantly varying indexed pages?
I do not dispute what you just said, just looking for reassurance I guess.

[edited by: msgraph at 7:53 pm (utc) on Aug. 13, 2005]

[jcmiras]

one website link to mine as;
[mywebsite...] .
when i search the websites linking to mine using
link:http://www.example and link:example.com
in Google, the website that link to me using [example...]
appear in the list. So I think, for Google, its the same.

[g1smd]

Get the redirect in place now. Everything else will sort itself out within a few weeks or so.

Make sure that all internal links point to the correct one.

If you link to an index file, remove the actual file name from the link.

If you link to a folder make sure that you DO include a trailing "/" on the end of the URL every time. This is VERY VERY important (otherwise you may find that if the default domain for the site is domain.com but you want to use the www.domain.com version, that when you link to www.domain.com/folder the user is first redirected to domain.com/folder/ before being redirected again to www.domain.com/folder/) otherwise you will have a lot of problems.

[stakaman]

thanks for all your replies guys.
My IT people tell me that if they redirect, they will do it across the website. I have 126,000 pages indexed by Google so it is going to be a massive change. Hence the hesitation.

[esllou]

this is a bitter pill you just have to swallow sooner rather than later.

I was in the same position as you with my www/non-www split something like 20,000/18,000 in G. I "sucked it up" as you dear Americans might say, put the redirect in place in Feb and now have around 24,000 www version pages indexed.

The longer you delay, potentially the worse it will be down the line when you ultimately decide to do it.

Oh, and I think we are closing in on a new G update too. No time like the present.

[g1smd]

The figures you present seem reasonable. On the small scale I recenly saw a site with 80 to 90 pages listed from each of www and non-www. Much more than half were duplicates. Most were therefore without title and description. Adding the redirect cleaned it up so that all 120 pages were properly indexed under one just version, and all with proper title and description too.

[stakaman]

I need to clear this with my boss. My difference is that non-www index at 126,000 vs. www indexing at 46,200. I now know that I need to take this step.
Its not only going to help my indexing, but also my PR and positioning that keep changing.